Mark Your Calendars: Don't Miss The CyberSummer Sale This Saturday!

By Kaeli Conforti
June 20, 2014
San Juan Marriott Resort & Stellaris Casino, Puerto Rico
Courtesy San Juan Marriott Resort & Stellaris Casino

For one day only, you can score major discounts on 20 hotels in Florida, the Caribbean, Mexico, and Latin America with the CyberSummer Sale on Saturday, June 21st. All deals must be booked between 12 a.m. and 11:59 p.m. on Saturday, June 21st, and depending on the package, travel dates are available throughout the summer and in some cases, until Dec. 31, 2014. Check out these specials:

FLORIDA
• Rooms at the Jupiter Beach Resort & Spa from $99 a night.
• 30 percent off stays of three nights or longer at the Lido Beach Resort in Sarasota, with room rates starting at $125 a night.
• Rates from $129 a night at the Lord Balfour in Miami Beach.
• Stays at the Sandpearl Resort in Clearwater Beach from $140 a night.
• Rates at the Marco Island Marriott Resort Golf Club & Spa from $149 a night.
• 30 percent off at The Resort at Longboat Key Club in Longboat Key, with rates starting from $167 a night.
• Rates at the W Fort Lauderdale from $169 a night.
• Stays at the Marriott Stanton in Miami's South Beach are 35 percent off, with rates starting at $168 a night.
• Rooms at the Sense Beach House in Miami Beach from $169 a night.
• Rates at the Ft. Lauderdale Marriott Harbor Beach Resort & Spa from $199 a night.

CARIBBEAN
• Rooms from $99 a night at the Santa Barbara Beach & Golf Resort in Curacao.
• 30 percent off stays at the San Juan Marriott Resort & Stellaris Casino in Puerto Rico with rates starting at $130 a night.
• 35 percent off stays at the Aruba Marriott Resort & Stellaris Casino, with rooms starting at $162 a night.
• More than 50 percent off stays at the CuisinArt Golf Resort & Spa in Anguilla.
• Rates from $189 a night at Elegant Hotels in Barbados: Tamarind, Crystal Cove, and Colony Club.
• Three nights free when you book four nights at the St. Kitts Marriott Resort & The Royal Beach Casino.

MEXICO
• Stays at the CasaMagna Cancun Marriott Resort in Mexico from $125 a night with a $50 daily resort credit when you book at least two nights.
• Rooms at the JW Marriott Cancun Resort & Spa in Mexico from $175 a night with a $50 daily resort credit when you book at least two nights.

LATIN AMERICA
• 30 percent off nightly rates at Casa Polopó in Guatemala, with rooms starting at $98 a night.
• Stays in a Classic Inca Room at the JW Marriott Cusco in Peru from $200 a night.

Plan Your Next Getaway
Keep reading
Road TripsTravel Tips

Our Best Road Trip Tips!

I love road trips! Long before I became editor of Budget Travel with its popular Road Trips series, I always loved packing up the car and heading... anywhere! From childhood trips to Martha's Vineyard to college weekends down the shore, for me the notion of "vacation" and "great drive" have pretty much been one and the same. When my wife and I lived in San Francisco, we fell hard for the stretch of highway between the City and San Simeon—the incredible road trip that took us through Santa Cruz, Monterey, and Big Sur. These days, we live in New York's Hudson Valley (just outside New York City), and we are planning a trip out west—Billings, MT. I was pleased to discover an exciting new road trips tool right on the Budget Travel website: Destination Anywhere, sponsored by Firestone. Check it out: You can enter the start and end point of your "ultimate road trip" and a search engine with information from FourSquare will provide you with a route and destinations along the way. I'm getting psyched for some fun stops between New York and Billings, including Hershey Park, PA; Cedar Point, OH; and Chippewa Falls, WI; and much more. Using the Destination Anywhere road trip tool also means you can enter to win a 7-day vacation at one of 1,800 resort destinations, a set of 4 Firestone tires, or a $500 Firestone Visa Prepaid Card (you can enter once daily to increase your chances). Your ultimate road trip may not be quite as ambitious as the New York to Montana trip I'm considering, but here at Budget Travel we've always promoted Great American Drives, and over the years our readers have offered some incredible road trips tips. Here, some of our favorites. Happy trails! MUSIC. Create a "road trip mix" of songs—let your friends and/or family pick out favorites that you can listen to along the way. And the mix will become a memorable keepsake of the trip to be remembered long after you've unpacked your bags. TREATS. Traveling with kids? Stop at the dollar store before your trip and load up on cheap amusements you can hand out over the course of your trip. Nothing will stop fussing or the dreaded "When will we be there" like a new plaything! GET SMART. Audiobooks can be pricey. But Cracker Barrel restaurants lets you rent them and return them along your route. Whether it's an inspiring session of Arianna Huffington's new Thrive or a third (or fourth) listening to The Sorcerer's Stone, an audiobook, like a music mix, can become a unique and distinctive part of your journey. GAMES. My own family loves playing the license plate game: Keep a list of every state (and Canadian province!) that you spot along the way. You'll be surprised at how quickly you spot Hawaii (considering it's thousands of miles out to sea), and how some of the lower 48 can be a little rare. We also play 20 Questions and the nonsense variation I invented, Infinite Questions, in which there are no answers, only ridiculously worded queries—intended to crack up everyone in the car—that can go on, well, at least until someone needs to make a rest stop!

Family

What's Your All-Time Favorite Family Vacation?

Fun family getaways were the theme for our May/June digital issue of Budget Travel magazine (now available on BudgetTravel.com, in the Apple App Store, on Google Play, and for Nook and Kindle). To get into the spirit of things, we asked several of our staff members to share their favorite places for family vacations—here's what they said: "Learning to ski at Keystone Resort in Colorado!" —Robert Firpo-Cappiello, Editor in Chief "A family trip to Southern California when I was 11. We had a great time visiting Disneyland, Santa Monica Pier, Hollywood, and taking on all the big roller coasters at Knott's Berry Farm." —Kaeli Conforti, Digital Editor "My favorite family vacation was traveling with my mom, dad, and uncle to visit our Italian cousins in Southern Italy!" —Jennifer O'Brien, Marketing Manager "Cape Cod beaches and candy shops!" —Amy Lundeen, Photo Director "I'd love to spend a week at a ski resort with my family, preferably one in Utah!" —Whitney Tressel, Photo Editor "Summer trips to a tiny bungalow in upstate New York." —Ruthie Kaposi, Digital Project Manager "A tropical resort with water sports like kayaking and sailing onsite (like Montego Bay, Jamaica); it's safe, there's alcohol, and there are things to do for all ages." —Chad Harter, Lead Developer "We love getting away to our family summer 'camp' in the Southern Adirondacks of New York State. Nothing like a cool mountain lake, a kayak, a bit of fishing, and some singing around the campfire. Cannot wait!" —Maureen Kelley Stewart, Advertising Account Manager "We went to the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and then went to Cape Canaveral, Florida, and watched a shuttle launch before relaxing in Daytona Beach for a week." —Michelle Craig, Digital Ad Sales Planning Manager "St. Michaels, Maryland, on the Eastern Shore in July, for great crab eating, tall ships, and historic sights." —Elaine Alimonti, President, Publisher "The white, sandy beaches of Gulf Shores, Alabama." —Dustin Gontarski, Compass Marketing "South Padre Island, Texas: family-friendly for kids from 1 to 101. We go with up to 30 family members every year." —Jo Neese, Neese & Lee Media "North Shore on the island of Oahu in Hawaii." —Lola Cohen, Advertising Sales Manager "Rome! With all that history, it awes at any age!" —Jeff Greif, Advertising Sales Manager Now it's your turn: what was your all-time favorite family vacation? Do you have a top spot you take the family every year? Tell us all about it below!

Travel Tips

Biggest Reward Program Blunders and How Not to Make Them

This article was written by Jake Redman, founder and host of ModHop. In addition to producing and hosting shows on SiriusXM Radio, he travels, spending his time in airports, lounges, and hotels, and shares his findings on ModHop.com to help others determine whether travel upgrades are truly worth the extra cost. Follow along with Jake's travel adventures on Twitter @ModHop and on Facebook. You what?! That's normally the response in my head when friends tell me what they just did with their frequent flyer miles or hotel points. "I bought a 19-inch Smarkyo TV for the bedroom, and it only cost me 50,000 frequent flyer miles!" Really?! Sure, I might spend a bit more time than most digging for the perfect redemption deal, but for that number of miles, you should be able to lock down a saver-level business class seat on a domestic flight (and even that isn't such a great deal). If I'm starting to sound like the travel version of the cranky know-it-all IT guy at your job, I'm not. Finding real value in your mile and point redemptions involves basic math, and I'm not at all good at it. The little I do understand is that points (airline miles in particular) can be valued between 1 and 2 cents each. Simply put it means that a small, off-brand sub $200 TV isn't likely as valuable a prize as a fancy plane ride to grandma's house. An over-valued merchandise-for-point exchange isn't the only blunder you can make when redeeming. Here are a few other examples of mistakes to avoid when you decide to trade yours in: Gifting milesSharing or "gifting" miles to someone can be the ultimate "ungift" to yourself. The bottom line is that unless the airline is offering a very hearty mileage bonus when you transfer the miles, it's not going to be worth it. Again, there's math involved, so bring a calculator if you decide to explore this option, and carefully consider the cost of the transfer, along with the airline's service charge. A 75-100 percent transfer bonus might be worth looking at, but those are rare and possibly near extinction. ForgettingA few programs have "miles that never expire," but many only give you a certain amount of time to use them before they disappear forever. One way to keep those miles alive is to earn more as cheaply as possible. For example, the Hilton Honors program keeps your points alive for 12 months after your last stay or point redemption. Once that time is up, bye-bye points. Our favorite way to save them from vanishing is to buy anything that costs any amount of money using their "Shop to Earn" portal. Any purchase made before your points' expiration date will keep them alive for another year. Whatever is on that direct-mail piece you just receivedThe dollar-to-credit card point value of what are sometimes referred to as "experiences" is subjective. A little bit of research shows that opportunities to try things like driving a real stock car or going for a hot air balloon ride is valued at about .01 per mile. If either has been your lifelong dream, and you don't know anyone with a stock car or hot air balloon parked in their backyard, then maybe—just maybe—there's personal value to this kind of trade. Otherwise, keep looking for something that gets you even just slightly closer to 2 cents per mile. Not using themI was at a convention of mileage and point nerds not long ago, and a newbie in one of the sessions asked what he should do with his miles. I forget the exact number, but, when asked how many miles he was sitting on he replied with a number so large that the crowd actually booed him. Don't be that guy. Airlines and hotels constantly try to find new ways to balance customer reward with profit, and it doesn't always favor you. Over time, it won't be much of a surprise to see those miles continue to be devalued, so time is increasingly precious. Find a way to use miles for things like seat upgrades on long flights or hotel rooms that cost a lot more than you would normally think of spending. Be patient, keep an eye out for the best value, and get the most from your piggy bank of points.

Road Trips

Road Trip: South Dakota's Badlands and Black Hills

Get ready to visit historical monuments like Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse Memorial, see the Old West come to life in historic Deadwood, and experience plenty of brag-worthy encounters with nature-where else can you say you were caught in a traffic jam because a herd of wild buffalo decided to cross in front of your car? Leave your trusty GPS behind (there's no reception in the mountains, anyway!), break out the old road map, grab your friends and family—or take on the adventure solo like I did—and whatever you do, don't forget your camera. WALL & BADLANDS NATIONAL PARK 55 miles From Rapid City Regional Airport, it's about an hour drive to Wall, a funky little town that's home to Wall Drug, an area institution since 1931 where you'll find everything from souvenir shops to a giant animated T-Rex, and plenty of space for the kids to unwind after a long day on the road. Stop by the Western Art Gallery Restaurant for their famous homemade donuts, bison burgers, and five-cent coffee. The best part: admission is free, as is the ice water—a marketing tool that has brought in visitors since the 1930s. As you leave Wall, stay on Highway 240 and head south into Badlands National Park along the Badlands Loop Scenic Byway, driving west to east through some of the most amazing prairie landscapes and impressive canyons in the country. Keep an eye out for bison, pronghorn, deer, eagles, prairie dogs, and hawks as you drive and be prepared to pull over every time there's a sign that says, "Scenic overlook." Trust me. The park is never too crowded and you can spend hours just admiring the views around you in relative peace and quiet. Stick around for the evening program, usually around 9 p.m., where kids can meet Smokey the Bear, stargaze, and learn about how the park was formed. Park entrance fees are valid for seven days: $15 per vehicle, $10 for motorcycles, $7 for hikers and bicyclists, or $30 for an annual pass. Stay at Frontier Cabins, located just off I-90 on the way into Badlands National Park (rates from $108-$149 per cabin from May-August; lower in shoulder season months). BEAR BUTTE STATE PARK & DEADWOOD 100 miles Cruise down I-90, turn off at Highway 79, and drive through Sturgis on the way to Bear Butte State Park. While a popular hiking spot for travelers, the site is still considered to be sacred to Native Americans—as the ranger in the Visitor Center explained it to me, hiking up Bear Butte is kind of like going to church, so remember to be respectful. It's only about a 30-minute drive heading the opposite way on Highway 79 from here to Deadwood, but you might as well be driving 200 years back in time to the Old West. Visit during the summer to see the Days of '76 PRCA Rodeo—you can still go to the Days of '76 Museum year-round to see exhibits about Deadwood's first settlers (admission is $5.50 for adults, $2.50 for children ages 7-13, while children ages six and under get in free). Stroll around town-a dead ringer for any western town you've ever seen in the movies-and take the Alkali Ike Tour around historic Deadwood and up to Mt. Moriah Cemetery to see the gravestones of Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane-real, legendary characters who once called Deadwood home ($10 for adults, $5 for ages 6-16, $9 for seniors). Catch a free reenactment of an Old West shootout in front of the Franklin Hotel (several times a day, just follow the crowd!) and witness the shooting of Wild Bill Hickok inside Saloon #10 daily at 1 p.m., 3 p.m., 5 p.m., and 7 p.m. Their website proudly states, "Bring the kids!" Stay at the Springhill Suites by Marriott, located on Main Street about a 15-minute walk from the historic downtown area (rooms from $79 a night). MOUNT RUSHMORE & CUSTER STATE PARK 72 miles Take a scenic ride down highway 385, then highway 16, and follow the signs to Mount Rushmore, one of America's most iconic attractions featuring the larger-than-life faces of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln carved into the side of the mountain. Take a walk on the boardwalk trails that lead up to the base of the mountain for a better view, and stop by Carver's Café for lunch and the chance to try out Thomas Jefferson's original ice cream recipe! (Admission to the park is free, but you must pay $11 to park your vehicle). Drive along Iron Mountain Road, or Alt. 16, a winding two-lane road that will take you through one-lane tunnels (honk first!) and past beautiful mountain vistas. As you get closer to the park, get your cameras ready-buffalo roam in and around Custer State Park and will often decide to randomly cross in front of your car. Resist the temptation and only take photos from inside your vehicle—these animals are majestic but strong and big enough to cause some major damage. Pay $4 per person to enter Custer State Park and stay in the middle of all the action at the State Game Lodge, the former Summer White House for President Calvin Coolidge in 1927 (room rates from $115 a night in June for a lodge room). While you're there, sign up for a Buffalo Safari Jeep Tour to get up close to the park's resident buffalo, prairie dogs, and other wildlife on a bumpy, off-road adventure through the native wilderness. End the day with a chuck wagon cookout in the wild, where cowboys sing as you feast on your choice of sirloin steak or hamburger, beans, cornbread, potato salad, coleslaw, watermelon, and fresh lemonade ($85 per adult and $65 for children under 12 for the combination Jeep Tour and Chuck Wagon Cookout; $45 per adult and $38 for children under 12 for just the Jeep Tour; $49 per adult and $40 for children under 12 for just the Chuck Wagon Cookout). CRAZY HORSE MEMORIAL, HILL CITY & RAPID CITY 69 miles Drive along Needles Highway (Highway 87), another mountain road with several one-lane tunnels and beautiful views of Sylvan Lake along the way. When you get to the end of Highway 87, turn left and head south on Highway 385/16 for about 20 minutes to Crazy Horse Memorial. Started in 1948 as a way to pay homage to the legendary Lakota leader and our nations' Native American heritage, Crazy Horse Memorial is funded by admissions and donations rather than the U.S. Government—the upside being, it will never close if there is another National Parks shutdown, the downside being the stone carving is still a work in progress. Tour the Indian Museum of North America and the Native American Educational and Cultural Center while you're there, and stop by the restaurant for the best Tatanka Stew in the area—people kept telling me to try it at Mount Rushmore and Custer State Park the day before! ($10 for adults, $27 per carload, $5 for motorcycles, and free for children under age six, Native Americans, active military members, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts in uniform, and all residents of Custer County, South Dakota). Visit the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research in Hill City on your way back towards Rapid City on Highway 385/16—it's 20 minutes up the road and kids will love seeing enormous dinosaur skeletons and a room full of shiny gemstones (admission is $7.50 for adults ages 16 and up, $6 for seniors, veterans, and U.S. military members, $4 for children ages 6-15, and free for children ages five and under). From here, it's a half-hour drive on Highway 16 into Rapid City, home to the Museum of the American Bison, a vibrant downtown with concerts and outdoor festivals year-round, and have your picture taken with life-size bronze statues of your favorite former Presidents that line the streets of the historic district. Stay at the Adoba EcoHotel Rapid City, a newly renovated hotel that is stylish and eco-friendly (room rates from $99 a night).